Lead Backend (Java) Engineer

Technology is at the heart of Disney’s past, present, and future. Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is a global organization of engineers, product developers, designers, technologists, data scientists, and more – all working to build and advance the technological backbone for Disney’s media business globally.

The team marries technology with creativity to build world-class products, enhance storytelling, and drive velocity, innovation, and scalability for our businesses. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers. We work with every part of The Walt Disney Company’s media portfolio to advance the technological foundation and consumer media touch points serving millions of people around the world. 

Here are a few reasons why we think you’d love working here:

1. Building the future of Disney’s media: Our Technologists are designing and building the products and platforms that will power our media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.

2. Reach, Scale & Impact: More than ever, Disney’s technology and products serve as a signature doorway for fans' connections with the company’s brands and stories. Disney+. Hulu. ESPN. ABC. ABC News…and many more. These products and brands – and the unmatched stories, storytellers, and events they carry – matter to millions of people globally. 

3. Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms, and solve complex and distinctive technical problems.

The Product & Data Engineering team is responsible for end-to-end development for Disney’s world-class consumer-facing products, including streaming platforms Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, and digital products & experiences across ESPN, Marvel, Disney Studios, NatGeo, and ABC News. The team drives innovation at scale for millions of consumers around the world across Apple, Android, Smart TVs, game consoles, and the

web, with our platforms powering core experiences like personalization, search, messaging and data.

Responsibilities:

• Contribute to the design, development, testing, deployment, and support of core software in a cloud environment.
• Drive projects end-to-end: designing the initial solution; finding alignment with partner teams; execution of the necessary code; and overseeing the deployment of code to production.
• Lead and reinforce a high level of operational excellence for systems underpinning applications.
• Advocate engineering best practices, including the use of design patterns, code review, and automated unit/functional testing.
• Handle architectural and design considerations to evolute the system, focusing on security, reliability, efficiency, and flexibility.
• Mentor engineers within your squad (and beyond!) to help them improve their technical ability and build their profile within and outside of the organization.
• Collaborate efficiently with product management, technical program management, operations, and other engineering teams.
• Proven track record of designing and driving consensus on backend architectures.

Basic Qualification:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience
• 7+ years of related experience crafting large-scale, highly available Java services utilizing various database and messaging technologies.
• Strong programming skills in Java and other object-oriented languages, and a strong grasp of computer science fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, databases, etc.)
• Experience using source control systems and CI/CD pipelines and deep understanding of and experience using caching technologies.
• Strong grasp of computer science fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, databases, etc).
• Strong understanding of design patterns and principles.
• Experience with object-oriented programming patterns and functional programming patterns.
• Experience with AGILE/Scrum practices.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working on highly scalable, real-time software platforms
• Extensive experience with Amazon Web Services (AWS) or similar cloud service
• Experience implementing and optimizing complex cloud software installations and infrastructure
• Skilled at work breakdown and task estimation.

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA is $159,500.00 - $213,900.00 per year, Glendale, CA is $152,200.00- $204,200.00 per year, Bristol CT is $152,200.00- $204,200.00 per year, in New York is $159,500.00 - $213,900.00 per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate’s geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.